The DAISY model was successfully tested for simulation of nitrate leaching through agricultural tile drainage system, crop N uptake, and soil water dynamics with a high accuracy.

A review of the historical data from seven CGIAR genebanks confirms that high seed viability has been maintained for many decades. However, deviations from optimum management procedures were revealed as well as a failure to collect as much data as expected.

In the summer of 2021, in a respite from the restrictions of the pandemic, the team at the Aarhus University Lake Warming Mesocosm Experiment (LWME) managed to run a heat wave experiment with support from the EU H2020 project AQUACOSM plus.

The course invites PhD students, but promising master and undergraduate students as well as other participants from indigenous groups or local organizations working on the topic are welcome. The course offers lectures, fieldwork, lab work, discussions and a local stakeholder workshop.

Professor Lis Wollesen de Jonge from the Department of Agroecology has received the prestigious SSSA award "Don and Betty Kirkham Soil Physics Award" for her great work in research within soil physics. The award is presented by The Soil Science Society of America.

The talented food scientist, Mario Martinez-Martinez from the Department of Food Science received this year's talent prize at the Food Analytics Conference 2021 held by the multinational FOSS Analytical.

Mario M. Martinez has been awarded a prestigious Sapere Aude research grant of 6.2 million DKK from the Independent Research Fund Denmark. The grant will be used to explore interactions between plant cell walls and flavonoids, which are found in most fruits and vegetables. This knowledge can protect us from the negative effects caused by sugars.

Alexandros Iosifidis is a new professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, where he will be continuing his research as one of Denmark's leading machine learning and artificial intelligence experts.

Researchers from Aarhus University have led a team that has discovered one of the ways legume plants balance nitrogen acquisition from the soil with that from their bacterial symbionts. The work identifies regulation of a key plant hormone, cytokinin, as central to this balance. These new results will aid in developing legumes with improved nitrogen fixation and a possible reduction in the use of fertilisers.

Aarhus University and GreenLab have concluded a formal partnership agreement to form the basis for a joint research platform. Focus will be on developing the energy systems of the future and their link with the green transition for the agricultural sector.

The Danish Climate Forest Foundation (Klimaskovfond) aims to reduce CO2 and provide more nature. This is the brief for the Climate Forest Foundation, which is just starting its work. Professor Jørgen E. Olesen has been appointed by the Minister for the Environment to participate in the advisory committee, which will ensure the greatest possible impact.

Previous initiatives to reduce the number of dead piglets in Danish pig pens have not been successful – on the contrary, piglet mortality is increasing. New research efforts aim to improve the genetic opportunities to help the piglets survive.

The seminars series provides an industry perspective on working with sustainability in the real-world and aim to shed light on current challenges and opportunities as well as future required research and knowledge, so academia and industry can collectively contribute towards global sustainable development. The seminar series is aimed at researchers, educators, as well as students across science and engineering.

Protein production from insects will be optimized with help from researchers at Aarhus University, Department of Animal Science and corporation partners. This will be achieved through the GUDP funded project EntoFeed, where the nutritional requirements of black soldier fly larvae will be investigated in order to maximize larvae production while reducing environmental impact.

Biological research has repeatedly demonstrated that the relationship between the producer and the consumer is governed by a scaling law. An international research team has now looked into whether this law of nature can be reproduced in the relationship between the production of plants in an area and the number of large herbivores that graze on them. The study reveals that Africa is the only continent where the scaling law holds true.

Increasing demand for automation meant that the Danish company, NIZE equipment ApS, was losing customers. Now, in collaboration with engineering students and researchers from Aarhus University, the company has started work on developing robots to work with humans in the future.

The Independent Research Fund Denmark (IRFD) has awarded DKK 280 million to 55 green research ideas, 15 of which are from Aarhus University. Nine projects from the Faculty of Technical Sciences have received a total of DKK 43.9 million.

The agricultural sector is facing a paradigm shift. Danish high-tech agriculture can show the world how a pervasive transformation of the industry can reform food production and, at the same time, tackle the crises facing the world.

In an article just published in the prestigious journal Nature Sustainability, an international research team offers new perspectives on the benefits of seaweed. The study underlines that the cultivation and use of seaweed can be a useful tool in the fight against climate change. But that’s not all: seaweed cultivation can also contribute to more sustainable production of bioresources (food, feed and materials), create jobs and even have a positive effect on the marine environment and biodiversity, provided that seaweed farms are set up and managed with care.

Again this year, the Faculty of Technical Sciences at Aarhus University has qualified for ISO 9001 certification, and can therefore document that its consultancy activities are of consistent quality and are managed according to international standards.

A new beginning is taking shape for the Department of Bioscience. After protracted preliminary work, including a new strategy, a number of strongholds have now been identified to make fertile ground for a new focus. As part of this work, it has been decided to change name to the Department of Ecoscience. This will be from 1 October 2021.

Temperatures, noise levels and light and air quality have a significant impact on learning for children and young people. A new indoor climate strategy for schools in the City of Aarhus aims to create an optimal indoor climate, and indoor climate experts from AU Engineering at Aarhus University are involved in the project.

A new, unique research centre has been launched. The Novo Nordisk Foundation CO2 Research Center is to be established with a grant of DKK 630 million from the Novo Nordisk Foundation (NNF) and based at Aarhus University. The new centre will ensure cross-disciplinary collaboration to reduce the amount of the greenhouse gas, CO2, in the atmosphere through researching and implementing new technology. The centre will be collaborating with a number of Danish and international partners.

Plants spend a lot of energy releasing hormone substances from roots to soil. It affects the microbial environment of the soil surrounding the plant, and has a far greater effect on certain species of plant parasitic nematodes than previously thought.

The VILLUM FOUNDATION recently announced the recipients of this year's Villum Experiment grants, and researchers at the Faculty of Technical Sciences have received total grants of almost DKK 6 million.

Danish expertise is at the forefront of a new pan-European research project to develop sustainable systems for livestock farming in collaboration with local livestock farms.

The energy consumption of the device will be so small that it can harvest its energy itself, directly from its surroundings. The project has received funding from the Villum Experiment programme.

A new research project at Aarhus University could be the determining factor for the computer technology of the future. The project aims to develop a sensor that can read so-called skyrmions. These are extremely small magnetic 'tornadoes', which may well be a vital storage medium in the future.

Laura Roman Rivas from the Department of Food Science receives the For Women in Science Award for her research into new foods that are both sustainable and nutritious. The prize is awarded by L’Oreál, UNESCO and the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters.

Natalia Prieto Vidal is one of a total of 14 new AIAS-COFUND Marie Sk?odowska-Curie fellows who have been selected in an international, triple peer-review selection process during the spring and summer

The Department of Bioscience can now present Chris Topping, who is taking on a new professorship in socio-ecological modelling. The professorship focuses on developing computer models to shed light on how land use and food production in agriculture affects nature and the environment.

Uffe Jørgensen is now employed as professor of perennial cropping systems at the Department of Agroecology at Aarhus University.

Every August, Aarhus University, together with Vestas and Siemens Gamesa, gather 50 of the world's best engineering students for a two-week summer school. The aim of which is to attract talent to the Danish energy sector.

The Department of Bioscience has further consolidated its strong research profile with four new professorships within Arctic ecosystems, environment and climate from 1 August 2021.

A wheat mutant found by a stroke of luck and grain preserved since ancient times helps us learn about the past and provides opportunities to create new knowledge for the future.

The demand for plant drinks is growing, but how is the quality of their proteins? Researchers are investigating this in a new project that, with the help of groundbreaking analysis methods, will ensure that the plant drinks of the future have the best possible nutritional quality.

Agriculture and food production have a solid starting point in Denmark for the work that will be carried out over the next few decades on the road to the green transition. An ambitious and cross-disciplinary project attracted several hundred spectators when it was presented at the end of June by the University of Copenhagen, the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), SEGES and AU. The project, which is a collaboration of researchers from all of Denmark's universities, has prepared a roadmap for a sustainable transformation of the sector.

Daniel Lucani Rötter is a new professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Aarhus University. He conducts research into how we can solve some of the internet's biggest Gordian knots.

Pollinators are needed, large parts of agriculture and world food production are heavily dependent on pollinating insects. Still, the number of wild pollinators is declining, but there is still something that can be done to stop the development. It requires new cultivation and beekeeping strategies, but it can be done.

Researchers from, among others, the Department of Agroecology at Aarhus University have found a method by which mechanisms can be activated in orange carrots so that they produce more anthocyanin dye, which can replace synthetically produced dyes in food. It provides new opportunities to replace synthetically produced dyes with plant-based natural dyes in the food we eat.

Grassland areas may reduce agricultural emissions of greenhouse gases and nutrients. Together with newly developed biorefining technologies, grasslands constitute a breeding ground for new sustainable products, e.g. green protein to replace the use of imported soya. A new research project will make it possible to harvest the benefits.

Researchers from Center for Quantitative Genetics and Genomics (QGG) have participated in an international project, where findings show the necessity of either including methane in the breeding goal, or do it through a correlated trait as residual feed intake, if methane emissions are to be reduced.

Cars must be able to share knowledge about what is happening on the roads and warn each other about dangerous situations. This will improve road safety in a future with autonomous vehicles, and Independent Research Fund Denmark is investing in technology development.

According to a new study conducted by researchers from Aarhus University and Scotland’s Rural College injuries om farms are more likely to occur through interaction with large livestock than any other operations. In fact, the risk of injury on cattle farms is three times higher than on pig farms.

What will be the role of universities in the green transition? Is 'Denmark as a test country' an opportunity or a constraint? And can we increase the supply of highly qualified labour by allowing older people to remain active on the labour market for longer? These are some of the questions on the agenda in the TECH tents at this year's Political Festival.

Engineering researchers from Aarhus University have developed electronic support stockings and tested them on bed-ridden Covid patients at Copenhagen University Hospitals, Bispebjerg and Herlev. The experiments show that the stockings counteract a significant loss of muscle mass.

In September, the UN General Assembly will host a high-level dialogue on energy. Aarhus University will participate in efforts to identify green transition strategies.

The countries around the Baltic Sea do not respect their binding international agreement to reduce agricultural pollution of the marine environment.

Soon, packaging for take-away foods might be completely based on local, sustainable materials instead of fossil-based products. In a new research project, a packaging solution based on upcycled grass fibres is being developed.

Five talented researchers set to receive Aarhus University Research Foundation’s PhD Award for their PhD projects from 2020. They have all attracted particular attention, both with their results and the way in which they have communicated their findings. The five researchers each receive DKK 50,000 in recognition of their research.

Too much bread ends up in the trash, but what if, instead, it could return to the supermarket in as high-performing and fully biodegradable packaging? In a new project, a researcher from Aarhus University will try to develop a green chemical process that can turn stale bread waste into packaging material. The project has just received 2.9 million DKK from the Independent Research Fund Denmark.

With a grant of DKK 10 million from the Novo Nordisk Foundation, researchers from Aarhus University are aiming to find out how best to use naturally occurring compounds to preserve food.

Professor Charlotte Lauridsen will be replacing Klaus Lønne Ingvartsen as the head of department at the Department of Animal Science from next September. The new head of department sees future animal research as a key area that, through collaboration and innovative interdisciplinarity, can contribute crucial knowledge and expertise to a number of challenges related to the green transition.

With a grant from Independent Research Fund Denmark of DKK 2 million, a team of researchers from Aarhus University hopes to develop a sensor made of novel conductive materials that can be implanted in the body, accurately measure the pressure of the selected organs, and then dissolve when it has finished its task.

The ReMeSh research project will increase our understanding of microorganisms' ability to convert CO2 into methane and it will form the basis for development of a new technology for efficient production of sustainable fuel.

In a major EU project, researchers from Aarhus University will develop brand new technologies to process and analyse image and audio sensor data from cities. This will increase security for citizens and enhance traffic flow.

A new innovative project aims to redraw the boundaries for fashion design, recycling technologies and consumer behaviour. Worn, damaged or new clothes that are discarded will be broken down into new raw materials and included in a circular economy.

It might be a good idea to look for inspiration in nature when designing load-bearing foundations for buildings. Researchers from Aarhus University and University of California Davis have found a significantly increased load-bearing capacity for piles when using snakeskin as surface inspiration.

Researchers from Aarhus University and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences have found that when farmers apply lime to acidic fields, they can not only increase crop production, but also reduce nitrous oxide emissions and increase the soil capacity to oxidize methane, thereby contributing to climate change mitigation.

Global climate change is putting pressure on our wheat crops with rising temperatures, droughts and higher concentrations of CO2, but the different wheat cultivars respond very differently. Researchers from Aarhus University, among others, have come closer to understanding why this is the case - and thereby a step closer to climate-proofing the wheat of the future.

The concept of storing renewable energy in stones has come one step closer to realisation with the construction of the GridScale demonstration plant. The plant will be the largest electricity storage facility in Denmark, with a capacity of 10 MWh. The project is being funded by the Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Program (EUDP) under the Danish Energy Agency.

Overlap of food and the Danish list of threatened species (red list) can help to guide action plans and management of bees in nature areas in Denmark, new research from leading European bee researchers from Aarhus University, among others, shows.

A building at AU Foulum, which among other things houses a demonstration plant for biorefining, was ravaged by fire on Tuesday night. Despite damage to the building, the researchers expect that the experimental activities will be able to resume within two weeks.

Using a medical CT scanner in a laboratory experiment, researchers have assessed the ability of five crops to loosen heavily compacted soil caused by heavy machinery. Long-term cultivation of lucerne and chicory show great potential for mitigating subsoil compaction.

Using excess electricity from wind and solar power, and CO2 from biogas, a new research and development project is aiming to produce biomethane in a pilot-scale experiment. The experiment is an important step in the Power-to-X technology that may give exports of Danish technology a green future.

Researchers from the universities in Aarhus and Aalborg are working closely with leading companies to develop intelligent, battery-less sensors that communicate wirelessly to an autonomous cloud-based monitoring system.

As a policy support response to the Danish Agency for Agriculture, researchers from Aarhus University have created a model that, based on air temperature, can estimate harvest dates for spring barley and winter wheat. And in an article in "Field Crops Research", the same researchers have used the model to show how the harvest date for crops can be used as a basis for assessing the growth of cover crops and thus the ability to reduce nitrate leaching.

Selin Kara is a new professor at the Department of Biological and Chemical Engineering at Aarhus University, where her research aims at using natural processes as a substitute for one of the world's most polluting industries. She wants to see more women in engineering and other STEM programmes, but there is a lack of role models, she says.

Aarhus University in Foulum leads a new and exciting project which is to form the basis for producing sustainable milk in the laboratory as an alternative to cow’s milk. The project is funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation.

Professor Milena Corredig from the Department of Food Science at Aarhus University will receive a grant of DKK 30 million from the VILLUM FOUNDATION. The grant will be used for research within future food processes.

Researchers from Center for Quantitative Genetics and Genomics (QGG) participate in a new EU Horizon2020 project – RUMIGEN – which aims at developing more sustainable breeding programs and linked technologies in line with social demand, adding a novel, societal dimension defined as ‘room of acceptance’ to the project goals.

A new, national pioneer center for artificial intelligence research is expected to open at the end of 2021.

Researchers from the Department of Mechanical and Production Engineering at Aarhus University are participating in an EUDP-supported development project to design future heat pumps for small and medium-sized district heating plants.

Limitations in models used by the IPCC in its calculations of possible pathways to climate-neutral energy production suggests that the potentials of solar photovoltaics as a powerhouse in the green transition have been drastically underestimated. This is the conclusion of new research from an international team of scientists and experts in photovoltaics.

We live in a world where we want our electronics to be flexible, bendable and stretchable apart from being intelligent. Printed electronics technology has emerged as the main route to enable this vision. A team of researchers from Aarhus University has now published a comprehensive review of its development that will enable researchers to address problems within this field.

This April, anyone with an interest in health and natural science research of the very highest calibre will have the opportunity to meet a Nobel Laureate when Professor Peter C. Agre visits Aarhus University via Zoom.

An article in the Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information, criticises Aarhus University for being unwilling to disclose unpublished research data to a special interest organisation. However, the university believes that researchers must be guaranteed freedom to publish their results before their research is made available to the general public.

A Vietnamese, sustainable straw was the inspiration for two AU students' thriving business of sustainable packaging for restaurants and takeaways in corona times. Aarhus University's open entrepreneurship office, Food eHub, assisted in applying for the first initiating capital.

Peat soils, paludiculture, and greenhouse gas emissions were the topics when Claudia Kalla Nielsen on 18 March won the annual Three Minute Thesis competition at Aarhus University, which this year was held digitally.

A large gathering of fish tempts harbour porpoises to search for food around oil and gas platforms, even though the noise from these industrial plants normally to scare the whales away. Decommissioned platforms may therefore serve as artificial reefs in the North Sea.

How do we know, if our food tastes good, or if it has already gone bad? The startup BettaSensing has created an innovative flavour recognition technology for the food industry. Last year, the company took part in the EIT Food entrepreneurship program Seedbed, which in Denmark is based at the Department of Food Science (AU FOOD) at Aarhus University. Seedbed welcomes new applications from the Nordics now.

Engineers and biologists from Aarhus University have developed an intelligent light trap that can count insects and determine their species as they fly past. This could significantly boost nature monitoring.

Technical Sciences has received 500 first-choice applications. This is fewer than last year. More people have applied for the new BScEng programmes in civil and architectural engineering and mechanical engineering, for example, while fewer people have applied for biotechnology and for food technology, for example.

The right mix of the ultraviolet radiation UV-B and monochromatic light, i.e. light with only one wavelength, can boost germination of our cucumber plants - and thus reduce the total production time. This is the conclusion of a new study by researchers from Aarhus University, among others. This knowledge is particularly important in the "vertical farms" of the future.

The green transition, sustainable technologies and interdisciplinary solutions to society's greatest challenges are the focal points of AU Engineering's new engineering profile magazine.

Every year, a new growth layer is added to the narwhal’s spiralled tusk. The individual layers act as an archive of data that reveals what and where the animal has eaten, providing a glimpse of how the ice and environmental conditions have changed over its long life span (up to 50 years).

Using machine learning, researchers from Aarhus University have developed a method that can map the distribution of grass, clover, and weeds on the farmer's fields, so that he more easily can adapt the supply of nitrogen. The method uses so-called DeepLabv3+ neural networks, and it is extremely robust and allows coverage of large areas in a short time.

Denmark is a leading nation of knowledge when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. A workshop followed by an international conference will highlight the Danish competencies and create new opportunities for companies to develop climate technologies for agriculture (in Danish only).

We need to move beyond simple linear cause-effect relations of food production and consumption and take a more holistic view, a so-called food systems approach, for the green transition to be successful. This was the common denominator at the first CiFOOD Conference at Aarhus University, which took place online in the beginning of February.

Artificial intelligence is a key word in two major EU-funded projects aiming to dramatically reduce the number of accidents and close call incidents on construction sites.

The project, which is being run by Henrik Skov at the Department of Environmental Science, will receive DKK 16.7 million for research equipment and research facilities to support the project and Danish work on green development.

Two research projects at the Faculty of Technical Sciences, have received a total of DKK 28.9 million for research equipment and facilities to support Danish work on green development.

As the sea ice shrinks in the Arctic, the plankton community that produces food for the entire marine food chain is changing. New research shows that a potentially toxic species of plankton algae that lives both by doing photosynthesis and absorbing food may become an important player in the Arctic Ocean as the future sea ice becomes thinner and thinner.

Climate change is more pronounced in the Arctic than anywhere else on the planet, raising concerns about the ability of wildlife to cope with the new conditions. A new study shows that rare insects are declining, suggesting that climatic changes may favour common species.

A new global collaboration to examine new ways of producing green ammonia is to receive DKK 21 million from the EU framework programme for research and innovation, Horizon 2020. The project is being headed by engineering researchers from Aarhus University

296 new Bachelor of Engineering students started their programmes at Aarhus University last week. This is an increase of 31 per cent compared with the winter intake last year.